some of its competitors, because the company’s business plan “is more of a licensing model, like Qualcomm’s.” San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]), which is the world’s largest provider of wireless chips, hires semiconductor foundries to manufacture its products and licenses its technology to telecommunications-equipment makers, cell-phone makers, and others.
It was the first time I’ve heard Schilling describe Genomatica’s business model as a technology licensing strategy, although the company has disclosed several industrial development partnerships with Tate & Lyle, Novamont, and Waste Management.
Using genetically engineered microbes, Genomatica has developed technology for making 1,4-butanediol (BDO), an intermediate industrial chemical usually made from petroleum-based feedstocks, from renewable raw materials like corn syrup and sugar cane. Genomatica has the capability, though, to apply its technology to produce an array of other petrochemicals from renewable raw materials.
In emerging from its year of silence, Genomatica disclosed several other recent milestones:
—Forming a joint venture with Novamont, a new Italian bioplastic manufacturer, for industrial-scale production of BDO, with initial production scheduled for 2013.
—Reaching a limited exclusivity agreement with Mitsubishi Chemical for producing BDO in Asia.
—Genomatica said it also had signed a memorandum of understanding with Versalis and Novamont for a partnership in bio-based butadiene.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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